


Thunderstruck

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Durin Family, Durin Feels, Dwarves In Exile, Gen, Kid Fic, Sibling Love, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 12:28:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No Dwarf in their right mind would weather a thunderstorm in the open air, but the Dwarves of Erebor have no home and no choice.</p><p>During a terrible storm, young Frerin finds himself uncovering a shocking truth about his brother and finds an equally surprising strength within himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thunderstruck

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing and am making no profit from this story which takes place in the first year of their exile, Thorin's about 15, Frerin's 10 and Dís is 6ish (in dwarf-years). I had a sudden hankering to do a Frerin POV. "The Lusty Young Smith" is from Thomas D'Urfey's _Songs of Wit and Mirth_ (1719) and is NOT appropriate for dwarflings.
> 
> Khuzdul Word of the Day - "namadith," "little sister"

The very earth beneath them quaked and rolled as thunder pealed around them. Frerin was afraid that the ground would toss so violently they’d be shaken off and away from each other, so he huddled closer to his brother and sister, heart leaping in his chest when another bolt of lightning lit up the skies.

Frerin had known thunderstorms before, but never had he been _outside_ during a raging tempest like this one. No dwarrow in his right mind would have chanced it, unless he was a vagabond or beggar. As a prince of the realm he he was always safely ensconced in the mountain during foul weather where the crackle of lightning could not harm him, nor thunderclap rattle his bones.

_The sound comes from the Maker’s hammers._

So spoke a voice in his head, but one that was not the sound of his own thoughts. A memory, rather. One he hadn’t reflected on in years, but came back to him clear as day in an instant, as though he’d been struck in the head by a bolt of lightning that hurled him back in the past.

It was Missus Halldóra’s voice he remembered, high and sweet as honey. She told him all about storms once, speaking low in his ear almost mischievously. It seemed an age ago when she took himself, Thorin, and Dwalin to the throne room during a downpour to watch the light flash before the windows, bright as daylight.

His grandparents accompanied them to see the spectacle and Frerin tried to act as unaffected as Thorin and Dwalin. The older boys were all excitement and wide eyes with every rumbling boom and bright, wicked illumination of the enormous windows. Then, as now, Frerin tried to hid his trembling, how he jumped every time the thunder clapped and startled him.

Missus Halldóra noticed, she knew everything and she put an arm around him, drawing him close to her and said there was nothing to worry about, only Mahal toiling away in His celestial forge.

 _He strikes at the anvil so hard that the sparks drop down from the heavens to land here upon the earth,_ she explained and this time, when the thunder was right overhead and seemed it would rock the Mountain to the core, he did not flinch.

 _We may have nothing to fear, but the forests of the Elves have been known to catch fire from time to time,_ Grandfather added, with a boyish grin despite his age and grey beard.His manner was so confident and easy that it made Frerin grin right back, wiggling out from under Missus Halldóra’s arm. _One of the Maker’s sparks can set the whole of the Greenwood ablaze and leave nothing but scorched earth when it dies away._

 _The stone would survive,_ Grandmother pointed out, lifting Frerin onto her broad shoulders when he held his arms up and begged to be given a better view.

 _Aye,_ Missus Halldóra nodded assuredly, lifting her face as the flash of light illuminated the room and turned her skin bone white. _Stone will always survive._

The quaking came again, but this time it came from inside Frerin himself, beginning as a twisting in his stomach and ending as an ache in his heart. He stuffed his fist in his mouth to stifle a choked sob for he _missed_ them all, terribly. He missed his Grandmother, her strong shoulders and big hands, the way he all but disappeared in her arms when she hugged him. He missed Missus Halldóra with her stories, her laughter like bells and her voice like a songbird’s. And more still, Aunt Frigga who was not _really_ his aunt, but laughed to be called so and his mother’s mother, soft and indulgent. So many, many more.

They could fill their days reciting the names of the dead, so Frerin kept his peace and held his tongue but this night he thought of them and felt unspeakably lonely, despite the presence of his brother and sister so close he could reach out and touch them without straining his arm. He did not.

Dís was hidden away in Thorin’s coat, all he could see of her was her dark hair and one little hand which clutched at their elder brother so tightly her knuckles had gone pale. Between the relentless pounding of the rain on the tent, Frerin heard his sister’s soft sobs.

“Shh,” Thorin whispered into her hair. “Don’t cry, namadith, don’t cry. Be brave now, dear one. It’s only light and noise. It can’t harm you.”

 _It can,_ Frerin wanted to stubbornly insist, but didn’t dare. Thorin might call him a coward, but he thought his sister was right to be afraid. _Grandfather said it could burn whole forests._

Would they burn, this night? Away to ash like those they loved so much? Frerin shivered and pulled a thick blanket around his shoulders. It was nothing like an embrace and he felt no better for it. _Summer storm,_ the Men whose horses they shod remarked carelessly that afternoon when the ominous black clouds began to gather. _Bolt the doors and lock the windows._

They had no doors and no windows. The wind whipped so violently about them that Frerin would not be surprised if the tent was whisked away into the darkness and all his kinfolk with it. Thorin held Dís tightly, no wind would tear her from his arms, but what of Frerin himself? Would he be cast away into the night, alone save for the thunder and lightning?

A stubborn, childish part of him wanted to shove his sister out of the way and wrap his arms firmly around Thorin’s middle. It was pure jealousy he felt, for who could not be jealous of one who claimed Thorin as protector? His brother was brave and strong and good. Frerin was fearful, too thin by half and intractable. Maybe it would be a fitting end, to be flung aside by the wind like a banner, limbs akimbo, wheeling endlessly on and on as the world burned away.

When he trembled again, he saw Thorin looking at him and he curled into a tighter ball, holding himself rigid under his brother’s gaze. Thorin never feared a storm, not when he was a dwarfling, not now when he was a nearly-grown Journeyman, full bearded. If he had not shaken his wits clear out of his head with nerves, Frerin might have made a joke, but words failed him and he only prayed that Thorin would look away before he knew his brother for a coward.

Unable to bear the suspense, he looked up just as a crack of lightning sounded and seemed to split the world in two. Dís dove completely under Thorin’s arm, but to her credit she did not cry out. And then her brothers were looking at one another full in the face.

Their eyes met over Dis’s head and Frerin’s breath caught in his throat. The sudden burst of light made the oilskin of their tent glow and caught Thorin’s face in it. His blue eyes were not gently mocking, but wide and covered over with a watery film. His lips were not defiantly set in a grimace, but parted. The arms that enveloped their sister were steady, but his knuckles stood out starkly where he clutched the back of her coat.

Impossible as it was for Frerin to believe, his good, steady, dutiful, nearly-perfect elder brother was just as afraid as he was.

All at once, his words returned to him. Sidling over and pressing himself against Dís’s back, untangling Thorin’s hands from her coat, he started to speak.

“D’you know what that sound is, sister dear?” he pulled her hair away from her ear and whispered loudly enough so that Thorin could hear him.

“Dragon,” she whispered, pressing her face so hard against Thorin’s chest, it seemed she was trying to crawl inside his skin.

“No! Much bigger than a silly old drake!”

“ _Frerin_ \- ” Thorin started, but his younger brother reached up and clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Hush, I’m teaching a lesson,” he said haughtily. “Now, namadith, that sound - ” another rumbling drowned him out, but Frerin pressed on “ - aye, that’d be it, _that_ sound is nothing but a bit of forging.”

Dís peeked up at him, eyeing her brother doubtfully. He could always draw her out of her fear when she thought he was telling her fibs. “Forging?”

“Just so,” he nodded, propping his head up on his elbow. “The Maker’s up there plodding away at work at His anvil - bang, crash, clank! - just as loud as you please. And he’s making quite a racket, so loud that we’re hearing it ourselves. And those lights you see? Red-hot filings that come right off whatever blade or setting for some fine jewels He’s banging out.”

Dís looked from Frerin’s too-earnest face to Thorin’s too-solemn one. “Is that so?” she asked her eldest brother.

“It is,” he said, smoothing her hair back and drying the tracks of her tears with his thumb. “And if you see a new star in the sky tomorrow eve, that’s the glinting of a diamond He’s set and polished.”

“You know, that makes me think of a song!” Frerin sat up and drew in a deep breath. “ _A lusty young smith at his vice stood a-filing, his hammer lay by, but his forge still a-glow! When to him a buxom -_ ”

Thorin reached over and cuffed him behind the ear. “She’s too young,” he said.

Frerin stuck his tongue out at his brother, which earned him another cuff. “ _You’re_ too young,” he retorted.

“I know that one!” Dís said and continued singing where Frerin left off. “ _When to him a buxom young damsel came smiling and asked if to work in her forge he would go -_ ”

One of Thorin’s hands came down over Dís’s mouth and cut the bawdy song off before she got to the chorus. “Hush! What would Amad and Adad say if they heard you carrying on like we were in an alehouse?”

“They’d not say a word to me,” Frerin said innocently. “But to Grandfather, being that _he_ was the one who taught me the words.”

“But _you’d_ be the one who’d catch a whipping for it - urgh!” Thorin pulled his hand away from Dís’s mouth, torn between amusement and disgust. “Did you just _bite_ me, you little goblin?”

“Licked you,” she said smugly. “Got the job done!”

Grumbling, Thorin wiped his hand clean on Dís’s face, prompting her to squeal in indignation and give him a hard shove in the chest. He did not move, but appreciated her enthusiasm; better violence than tears any day. Frerin half rose and launched himself at Thorin, landing half on both his brother and sister in a tangle of grasping arms and flailing fists as they began a very chaotic wrestling match.

The next time they heard a sound like thunder, it was their father untying the tent flaps and shoving his coarse grey streaked beard over the spectacle of his youngest children sitting atop his eldest, having overwhelmed him through sheer numbers and Thorin’s own good nature. The air that blew in with him was cool and fresh.

“Will you keep it down!” Thráin bellowed and in an instant the three lay side by side on their blankets, looking as sweet and innocent as a fresh cup of milk. He wasn’t fooled for an instant. “You’ll wake half the camp!”

“We’re not so loud as the storm,” Frerin pointed out, in what he thought was a supremely logical fashion.

Thráin was unimpressed. With a snort like a charging bull, he replied, “Storm’s long over, you little idiot. Can’t hardly hear the thunder and there’s no excuse for you to be up and about - especially since I don’t want a certain addle-brained apprentice falling in the fire on the morrow, laddie.”

“Dwalin _is_ clumsy,” Frerin nodded and grinned, diving beneath his blankets and doing a very good impression of a peacefully sleeping dwarfling.

Thráin merely sighed and shook his head, grunting in response to Dís’s cheerfully voiced, “G’night, Ada!”

Soon, she and Thorin were deeply asleep, but Frerin stayed up a little later, thinking. It was evident to him immediately that Dís needed looking after. She was one of the youngest dwarflings who had been saved from the Worm’s wrath, in addition to being his little sister. It never occurred to him that Thorin needed some care too.

Propping himself up, Frerin tried to make out his brother’s face in the darkness and could just discern the line of his nose and set of his chin. His lips were slightly parted again, but not in fear, rather quiet repose. With his jaw slack and his brow uncreased by worry, he did look awfully young, he looked...well, he looked his own age. Which, now that Frerin considered the matter, was not so very old after all.

Very well then, he decided as he lay down and let sleep cloud his mind at last. He would see to both of them and let nothing, not wind, nor rain, nor thunderstorms tear them apart.


End file.
